Tuesday, 19 February 2013

There's Something in the Fog

It's hard to believe, but John
Carpenter turned 65 this year. He has both delighted and scared
generations of movie-goers who grew up watching his films in the 70s
and 80s and is now appealing to a new generation, including my son,
through DVD releases of his classics. He is noted as the director of
Halloween, which started the slasher sub-genre in horror
movies, as well as such cult classics as TheThing, The
Fog, and Escape from New York, the last two being my
personal favorites. Moreover, in an age of multi-million dollar movie
budgets, it's amazing that many of Carpenter's most popular movies
were made for well below one million dollars. Halloween was produced
with a budget of $320,000 while it grossed over $65 million. On the
other hand, his big-budget movies were often commercial failures.
Carpenter had a budget of $15 million for The Thing, but it
was not a commercial success when it was released in 1982, although
it is now regarded as a horror classic.

One of my favorite stories of early
married life involves Carpenter's The Fog. It was in the
early 80s, and my wife and I had just left university and joined the
exodus out west to find jobs. We were living in a high-rise apartment
building in Calgary and were watching the movie on our portable black
and white TV (I think the screen was all of 11 inches). My wife, who
is very easy to scare, was watching the scene in which someone
(something?) knocks at the door of the lighthouse in which they've
taken refuge. If you're a Carpenter fan, you probably remember the
sequence: Adrienne Barbeau opens the door, there's nothing there, but
then … one of the creatures suddenly lurches forward from the fog.
At this point, my wife screamed (rather loudly, I might add).

Once she settled down again, we
continued to watch the movie. About ten minutes later, there was a
knock at the door. It was Calgary's finest responding to a call that
someone heard a woman screaming in distress in the building. After
assuring the officer there was no woman in distress, I returned to
TheFog, hoping there was nothing else in the fog that
would set my wife off again!

What is Carpenter's legacy? Like
Hitchcock, he's a master of the still camera and wide angle lenses,
and he is adept at setting a tableau: the moment of calm before the
horror descends. And like Stephen King, he grew up reading
Lovecraft and other horror masters, and he is able to combine
elements of horror and science fiction to tell a tale that's
downright scary.